thrown for a loop
by CalaveraCandiedSkull
Summary: He sits alone in a bar, until he gets a visit from someone with piercings and a bandana who looks a lot like he might fifteen years from now. - some GaLe.


He sat alone in a bar.

It was generally how he spent his days after joining Phantom. Or, rather, his nights – his days were spent on strengthening the reputation on Black Steel Gajeel, which was growing steadily with each mission he accomplished. A year since joining a legal guild; a year since acquiring a taste for strong alcohol. A year since being nobody.

The bar used to be crowded every night. Dingy, sure, and cheap as fuck. But popular. Swarming with patrons opening tabs and starting parties on a weeknight, just because they could. Oak Town was no shiny, respectable place. Most people didn't have decent jobs anyway.

When Gajeel first arrived, he was kicked out of the bar. Literally fucking _kicked_, as in they took a boot to his face and told him to fuck off. He scrambled off to the side and they laughed, punching each other and shouting "Who is that kid, anyway?" and "I don't know, some rookie brat Jose hired."

He was fifteen then. He'd had the Phantom guild stamp for five months.

Two weeks after that, Gajeel came in with a new pair of shoes. This time when they kicked him, he kicked right back. Blood came spurting out of their mouths as he piled one on top of the other, just kicking whatever idiot decided to charge him with his brand new boots. The iron spikes on the toe gleamed red. And when he was done, he sauntered right into the bar and ordered his first drink. No one bothered him after that.

And now, the place was empty. Save for the lone bartender wiping the glasses and the shadowy figure sitting in the corner. Gajeel had never figured out whether the person was part of the guild or not, or even what gender they were. His dragon slayer senses only told him that the person smelled like rain.

Dragon slayer senses. What a fuckin' laugh that was.

The bell jingled, sounding louder than it should have in the stifling silence of the bar. Heavy, shuffling footsteps echoed, and they sounded familiar. Familiar enough for Gajeel to lift his head up off the bar and take a look around.

The light had gone hazy, or maybe that was just the drink. The low light was even lower; every particle of dust sharply visible under the single dim light bulb. He blinked a few times, looking around. The bartender was still there, slowly wiping the glasses in a mechanical motion. The strange being in the back corner was there, still and silent as always.

The newcomer made his way to the seat beside Gajeel's, plopping down with a heavy sigh. Cracking his neck, he spoke in a rough voice. "Man, it's shit out there. Got anything good to drink?"

The voice was so familiar that it nearly knocked Gajeel out of his chair. Deeper, older, calmer, but still definitely unmistakeably _his_ fucking voice.

The stranger laughed at Gajeel's response. "Calm down, kid," he said with a sharp grin. "You'll be losing street cred with reactions like that."

Gajeel shook, he wasn't sure whether it was shock or anger. Maybe both. "Who – do I know you?"

He shrugged. "No. Not yet, anyway. In fifteen years you will." He glanced around quickly. "That sounds about right, yeah? How old are you, sixteen? Yeah, fifteen years."

Gajeel started to say something, but stopped. Something about this wasn't right – the weird light, the way no one had reacted to their encounter. The bartender hadn't acknowledged the stranger's presence yet. Settling back into his seat, Gajeel took a good look at him.

The stranger, whoever he was, looked exactly like him. Well, not exactly – the piercings around his face were brighter and cleaner, and there was an orange bandana wrapped around his head. His face was older and weathered, but the eyes in his face were young. They danced in the light, the same fucking shade of red Gajeel saw every time he caught his reflection in something.

"No way," he said.

The older man quirked a studded brow under the cloth. "No way what?"

"No way you're me."

His grin broadened. "Oi, who said anything about that? I'm just here for a drink and some conversation."

Disconcerted, Gajeel turned back to his mug. He took a long swig, chugging it down. There was some kind of magic at work here, and he didn't like it at all.

"You're pathetic, you know that?"

He spit out the cheap beer, rounding on the stranger. "Oi, now hold the fuck up. Why do you get to call me fuckin' pathetic?"

"Why do you swear so much?" The man shot back just as quickly. Gajeel blinked.

"The fuck do you mean, why do I swear so much?"

"Every second word out of your mouth," the man continued. "You should be more literate. It gets you chicks, you know."

Gajeel snorted. "Right, and bandanas get you chicks, too?"

The man blinked. "No, chicks get you bandanas." Then he laughed, like he was making a really funny joke. Gajeel's mouth turned sour. It was too familiar a laugh. The _gi hee_, the one he hadn't used in years.

He pushed the alcohol away, stomach flipping.

"Why are you drinking?" the man asked. "Iron is better for you."

"I don't fucking eat iron," Gajeel growled.

"Not anymore, right?" The man guessed. "Eight years, eh? Long time to go."

It was too much. Gajeel whipped around, leaning off his seat and staring into the man's eyes with his most ferocious glare. "Fuck you. You aren't me."

"Why are you so sure?" The man asked. There was something strong in his eyes; something that refused to back down or even flinch under the gaze that had most men cowering for their mothers. Something in those eyes reminded Gajeel of a pair of eyes he hadn't seen in a very, very long time.

Retreating, Gajeel hunched over the bar. "I'd never wear a fuckin' bandana."

The man laughed again. Tapping the side of his head thoughtfully, he mused. "Yeah, I started years ago. Become like second nature, now."

"Why?"

The corners of his mouth were still turned up, and what caught Gajeel about that was how comfortable the smile looked on his face. It was a face that had been smiling for years, and not the cruel, stretched kind of smile he saw on the faces of most Phantom guild members.

"Someone I admired," the man said then, starling Gajeel out of his thoughts, "wore headbands and bandanas."

Gajeel scoffed, grabbing the glass of liquor and throwing back another shot. "They'd have to be pretty fuckin' powerful for me to admire them," he said. Shit, he didn't admire anybody. There was no bloody sense in the word. Nobody in this hellhole called Fiore was anything worth admiring.

The man watched Gajeel, gauging his reaction. "Probably the strongest person I've ever met," he said. "Can't throw a punch to save her life, course, but she could beat you up with a purse if need be."

Gajeel spit out the drink all over the counter. The man burst out into raucous laughter, even louder than before. Now Gajeel understood why he'd been watching him so carefully; he'd _wanted_ a fucking reaction like that.

When Gajeel finally caught his breath after coughing on the alcohol he inhaled, he glared at the man with watery eyes. "There is no way," he said, emphasizing. "No way in fucking _hell_ I would ever admire someone like that."

"Yeah, so you say," the man said with ease. "You admire a lot of people. Like Pops, for instance."

Gajeel tensed. "What the hell do you know about-"

"He didn't leave." A corner of the man's mouth played up in a smirk, as Gajeel tossed him the bird.

"Yeah he did," Gajeel muttered darkly, swirling the beer in his glass. The man's eyes twinkled, like he knew something.

"No, he didn't," the man said again, but before Gajeel could retort, he snapped his fingers and went off in another direction. "Oh, speaking of admiration. You know that kid, Ryos?"

It stirred recognition in Gajeel's mind, but not much. "What, that kid with the dumbass look on his face who always fuckin' hangs around after dark?" Truth be told, Gajeel had no idea why the kid only ever came out at night. It's like he thought the sun was gonna burn his face. "What about him?"

"Remember him," the man said then, with something of a faraway tone in his voice. It freaked Gajeel out, because fifteen years older or not that is still _his fucking voice_ and it sounded terrifying when it spoke with any emotion other than anger.

"Why?"

The man wasn't looking at Gajeel anymore; instead his eyes were focused on the back wall where the shadows were extra heavy due to the light's angle. "He's a good kid," he said finally. "Just remember that."

Gajeel had always been good at reading people. He prided himself on that; on his ability to look at a man's face and see what would bother him, what would set him off. He was good at knowing what people were thinking, and in a world full of mages who wore their hearts on their sleeves that only made it so much easier.

But with this man, he was stuck. He couldn't tell anything, couldn't discern anything about the way his mind worked. And he couldn't keep his eyes on the man's face for very long. It gave him a huge fucking case of vertigo.

So he moved his gaze down, following the scarred, muscled arm that was leaning easily on the counter. He followed it down to the hand, along the fingers, until he caught something that gave him tunnel vision.

The man caught Gajeel's look, and raised his hand to his face. "Oh, this?" He said, turning his hand over. The ring glinted, a simple iron band with an old-world design etched around. It looked handmade; simple, but like time and effort had been put into making it.

It wasn't so much the ring that had Gajeel's attention. It was more the finger it had been placed on. "You're married?" He asked the man, incredulity seeping into his voice.

"Yep," the man grunted, sounding gruffly pleased. "Going on ten years now. Mm, speaking of, it's Logan's birthday coming up soon, thanks for reminding me."

"Who the fuck is Logan?" Gajeel asked, although he feared he already knew the answer.

"My son." The simple admission made the man's face stretch into an even wider grin, the kind of unconscious grin people gave when they talked about their family. "Great kid. Only nine, but he's a total badass. Smart, too. Belle could learn a thing or two from him."

"Belle?"

"Yeah, his sister. I know, great name, right? The shrimp insisted. Anyway, she's smart, too, but she's got a temper worse than yours. Gets in the way of all those brains."

Gajeel couldn't bring himself to answer. Couldn't find an answer to _give_. Things had gone from strange to downright terrifying the second he caught sight of that ring, and now it seemed like the world was spinning all around him and he was caught on a boat in the middle of a storm. It was too much, way too much.

So he concentrated his glare on the bottom of his beer mug, and circled back to the only thing keeping him grounded. "No way."

"What? No way he's a badass? Naw, I'm telling you, smart people do better in battle, plus he can beat the whole guild at chess-"

"There is no fucking way that _you_ are _me_."

Before, the man had laughed and joked whenever Gajeel said that. Now, however, he settled back onto the barstool, resting his chin on his palm and watching Gajeel –studying him. "What makes you say that?"

Gajeel did not lift his eyes from where they were glued. "Because I would never wear fucking bandanas, or have kids, or – or get married, that's why."

"Why?"

Gajeel growled. "Why? Because it's a pansy-ass thing to do! Because it's weak!"

The man's eyes narrowed. "You think having a family makes you weak?"

Sputtering, Gajeel turned to the man only to find the front of his shirt seized in a fist like iron, and then he was being stared down by a pair of frightening, familiar but different, _so_ different, eyes. "Let me tell you something, punk," the man ground out. "I am you, even though I wish to all hell I wasn't. You're a pathetic excuse for a human being, you know that? You sit here all day, drowning out the hole inside you with violence and alcohol."

"I don't have a hole inside me-"

"Yes, you do." The man tightened his grip, pulling Gajeel to his feet. "There's been one ever since Pops left. I know, idiot. And I know you stopped believing you could use dragon slayer magic, or eat iron. I know nothing you eat ever tastes right, and I know that beer never actually hits the spot.

"Well, let me tell you something, kid. You're gonna start eating it again. You're gonna start being a dragon slayer again. And for a while, you'll think you're where you belong. And then a group of people are gonna show up, and they're gonna change all that. You might hate them at first, but these people are gonna teach you more than you ever thought you could learn.

"And then, you'll meet this girl. The most beautiful girl in the whole world, and do you know what this girl is gonna do to you? She's going to love you. She's gonna take you in with open arms, and fix you, and she's gonna tighten all the loose screws and make you better. And you are going to clutch onto this beautiful, undeserving woman and never let her go. And together, you two are going to create the most amazing, wonderful things that've ever existed, and their names are going to be Logan and Belle."

The man let go of Gajeel's shirt, and he went crashing back into the stool, staring up in awe. This man...he was not ordinary, Gajeel realized. The way he stood, with his shoulders back and chin raised. It was the stature of a man with pride, with something to protect. It was the kind of stature, Gajeel realized with widening eyes, that he had only seen once in his life, set in the shoulders of a dragon with iron scales. This man was extraordinary.

"You are going to belong somewhere, but it isn't here," the man finished.

Gajeel hadn't even realized that his hands were shaking.

"You won't remember this," the man tugged on the corners of his jacket. "You never seem to remember anything important. But after I'm gone, you're gonna turn to that bartender and tell him to get you a couple loose bolts. Trust me, once you do, you'll fell a hell of a lot better."

The man turned to leave, shoving his hands into the coat pockets as he went. Gajeel finally recovered part of his voice. "Where the hell'd you learn to be so eloquent?" he managed. The man turned his head over his shoulders, glancing back.

"When your best friend is a gentleman, it starts rubbing off," was all he said, and once again made for the door.

There were a million things Gajeel wanted to say, and all of them fought viciously to be said. In the end, the one that left his lips was, "I have a best friend?"

The man paused over the threshold. "Yeah," he said, without turning back. "Lily. Don't forget it."

And then he was gone, out the door and into the drizzling evening street leaving Gajeel sitting on his barstool like a dumbfounded idiot, which, in all honesty, right now he was.

Then the man poked his head back in and said with a grin, ""Oh, and that chick who sits in the corner and smells like rain? Go talk to her. She's just as lonely as you."

Gajeel blinked, and the light changed slightly. The bartender, who had been rubbing the same glass mechanically throughout the encounter, moved and walked over to Gajeel. "Hey, you want a refill, kid?"

Gaping, Gajeel pointed to the door. "Did you fucking see that?"

The bartender frowned. "See what?"

Shaking his head, Gajeel pushed the glass of alcohol away. "Forget it, I don't even want to know what the fuck just happened."

As the bartender shrugged and walked away, Gajeel's eyes wandered over to the far corner of the bar, where the strange figure sat, tucked away in all blue. Now that he focused, he could see that it was, in fact, a girl, only about a year younger than him with a somber expression.

The sound of humming caught his ears, and he glanced back at the bartender, who was wiping down glasses. Hesitantly, he opened his mouth, and the words left him before he could actually think about it rationally.

"Hey."

"Yes?"

"Can I get some scrap metal?"

Gajeel opened his eyes against the harsh sunlight, blinking blearily and groaning. Something shifted on the bed beside him, and he turned his face half-heartedly to see a mop of bright blue obscuring his vision.

His movement must have awoken her, because the next second her face turned over and those soft brown eyes squinted against the light. "Morning," she said sweetly, voice cracking like it always did when she woke up. "What time is it?"

"Dunno." He would have looked over to the clock on their table, but didn't want to move just yet. Instead he stared stock-still and stared at Levy's face.

"You never wake up early on your own," Levy observed, brow furrowing in confused entertainment. "Nightmares?"

He scoffed at the teasing. "What, nightmares? Me?"

She laughed, and propped herself up on her elbows. "Well, something woke you up."

Gajeel was silent for a moment, thinking. He wasn't very good at remembering his dreams, but... "Hey, you remember when we went to visit Pops last week?"

"Yeah?" She sounded uncertain of where their conversation was going.

"Remember what he said to me? About how he wished-"

"That someone had been there to talk to you?" Levy finished for him. After all, she'd been right beside him when it happened – when the great dragon had bowed his head and apologized for the first time in his life. When he told Gajeel that he wished someone had been there in his darker hours, to reassure him that not all was hopeless, that there was a light at the end of the tunnel, that something better was coming. "Yes, I remember that."

Gajeel mulled it over in his head. Things were awfully fuzzy. It stirred up some vague recognition. Nonetheless. "Naw, it's nothing. Just weird dreams."

Levy might have said something back to him, but the distinct sound of something crashing in their kitchen made them both tense and fall quiet. Whisper-yells reached his ears, and he could just make out the two voices bickering back and forth. _"-your fault-" "-no, it was yours, dummy-" _

Levy's face darkened drastically. "Those two," she seethed. "If that was the vase Erza got us last Christmas..."

Logan's voice drifted through the door. "Hey, Mom? You never really liked that vase we keep all the flowers in, right?"

Her face hit the pillow as she groaned in frustration. "I am going to kill them!" She turned one accusing eye on him. "They're your kids! You deal with it!"

He threw his head back and laughed.


End file.
